Chapter 88: The Queen's Choice -3-

During the several days of marching toward Orkney, a small but peculiar tension drifted through Arthur’s army.

While they were on the move, the Queen of Moidart drew up beside Arthur, glanced subtly behind her, and spoke with an awkward expression.

"Great King, I have a certain grievance."

"A grievance? What is this? You of all people making that kind of face?"

"That Queen of the Amazons back there. For the past few days, she has been glaring at the back of my head so fiercely it feels as though she might bore a hole through it. I have no idea what she finds so irritating... but she looks ready to pull out a weapon at any moment. It is enough to send a chill down my spine."

Just as Arthur was about to let out a short laugh at Moidart’s grumbling, Artoria, riding on the other side, added her own concern.

"I do not think it is simple jealousy alone, Brother. Lately... Penthesilea has been staring especially hard at Mordred in my arms. Not with the aggressive look she used to have, but with the eyes of someone lost in deep thought... a very complicated, confused gaze. She is clearly wrestling with something serious."

"Hmm...."

Arthur turned his head and glanced toward Penthesilea, who was silently walking at the rear of the marching column.

Sure enough, her bearing was no longer that of a sharp-fanged beast as usual, but rather a lonely wolf wandering after losing its way.

"All right. Leave her be. I’ll speak to her myself tonight."

The night before they reached Orkney.

A camp was raised on a windswept plain at the northernmost edge of Britain.

Inside his command tent, Arthur was reviewing a troublesome pile of documents sent from Nogares in the homeland by Kay and the civil officials.

In one hand he held a pen and parchment, and in the other a fork skewering a thick steak he had just roasted himself over the brazier.

He was chewing through the dripping meat while focusing on the papers when—

"......Master. No, Arthur. Is this a good time?"

The tent flap opened carefully, and Penthesilea stepped inside.

Normally, she would have strode in without hesitation and spoken her business at once, but tonight she lingered by the entrance, fidgeting and taking her time.

"Yeah, come in. I was just looking over some paperwork while having a late-night meal. Want some meat?"

Arthur asked as he slid over the plate with the steak, but she slowly shook her head and sat down in the chair before his desk.

A heavy silence drifted through the tent for a moment.

Penthesilea repeatedly clenched and unclenched the hands resting on her knees, then at last let out a deep breath and spoke.

"...I came to apologize."

"Apologize?"

"Yes. A few days ago, when you called me beautiful... I lost my reason and lashed out at you over it."

Her eyes trembled faintly.

"You did nothing wrong. I simply failed to overcome the wounds of my past and took my anger out on you. I am sorry."

It was a brutally honest apology, as if carving flesh from bone, coming from the proud Queen of the Amazons.

Arthur set down his pen, rested his chin on one hand, and gave a faint smile.

"It’s fine. I know what kind of trauma is engraved into your Saint Graph. I didn’t take it to heart, so don’t worry about it."

At that calm comfort, Penthesilea’s expression turned bitter.

"I... could never bring myself to like men."

Her voice sank lower.

"Of course, it is true that we Amazons had, for generations, a culture of shunning and rejecting men. But the reason I came to hate males themselves with a hatred that seeped into my bones was purely because of my own personal tragedy."

Before her eyes, the faces of the family she had lost in life flickered past.

"My sister Hippolyta... was brutally slain by the arrogant and violent hero Heracles. And what of my poor younger sister Antiope? She was abducted by that shameless bastard Theseus, violated by force, and even bore his child, only to be cruelly cast aside by him in the end and meet a miserable death."

Penthesilea’s fists trembled violently.

"And I fought on the fields of Troy with my life on the line, fully prepared to accept death as a warrior. But Achilles... that son of a bitch trampled on my pride as I lay dying and insulted me by looking down on me as nothing more than a beautiful woman. How could I not hate the Greek men who ruined my sisters and defiled my pride?"

It was a painful history she poured out as though coughing up blood.

But Arthur listened to her tragic tale in silence, then set down the fork in his hand and asked back in an exceedingly dry, cold voice.

"Your personal tragedy is regrettable... but even so, wasn’t the culture of you Amazons itself far too extreme and violent?"

"......"

"In the name of preserving your tribe, you abducted innocent men and raped them by force, then once the pregnancies were over, you brutally killed those men or drove them away. And if the child born was a boy, you strangled him on the spot or abandoned him in the mountains. If your tribe committed that level of cruelty for hundreds of years in the name of tribal law... then the tragedies your sisters suffered at the hands of heroes were, in a way, karmic retribution brought on by that horrific culture, weren’t they?"

It was an insulting statement that flatly denied the pride of the Amazons. Under normal circumstances, she would have flipped the desk over on the spot and swung her mace.

But.

She glared at Arthur, then soon let out a long, heavy sigh and lowered her gaze to the floor.

"...I cannot deny it. Perhaps you are right."

It was such a ready admission that even Arthur was surprised.

"At the time, I believed it was only natural, because it was the law of our tribe. But after death, after becoming a Heroic Spirit and watching many different lives in this world and within this army... I have only now realized how extreme our ways truly were. Not merely exile, but killing even newborn baby boys like beasts... that was certainly cruel."

Penthesilea suddenly lifted her head and looked straight at Arthur.

"That is why I wish to ask you something, Arthur. Some time ago, when you carried out a sweeping purge of the traitors in Dál Riata."

"Ah, when I exterminated their nine kinships?"

"Yes. As a king, I approved of your decisiveness in making an example of them to cut off the roots of rebellion, and I even viewed it positively. But... when the heads of innocent little children were taken as well, merely because they shared a traitor’s blood, your expression... looked rather complicated and troubled. Was I mistaken?"

At that sharp observation, Arthur awkwardly scratched the back of his head.

"Haha, was it that obvious? I thought I was keeping a poker face, but I guess I still lack discipline."

Arthur put another piece of steak into his mouth, chewed slowly, swallowed, and then gave a bitter smile.

"Of course I was troubled. I made that decision as a king, to set an example, and I do not regret it, but how could it not weigh on me to kill even children?"

Staring at the night sky beyond the tent, he murmured quietly.

"Well, I do rationalize it by telling myself that compared to other tyrants and conquerors, the scale of my purge is a drop in the bucket. Even our great Queen Boudica of Britain massacred ninety thousand innocent Romans and foreign merchants, and far away in the East, a man named Cao Cao slaughtered hundreds of thousands of common people in Xuzhou as casually as crushing insects. Compared to that, my extermination of nine kinships, done cleanly with beheading and no torture, is practically merciful."

"......"

Arthur cited Boudica, one of his distant forebears, and Cao Cao, one of history’s more extreme rulers. Both, like Arthur, had their justifications.

And even with those justifications, both had carried out slaughters so excessive one could only wonder if they had gone too far.

Yet they were judged differently. In Boudica’s case, most regarded her as a hero and found her actions understandable, while even those who revered Cao Cao could not defend the great massacre of Xuzhou.

It said something that even Chen Gong, who belonged to the inhuman sort, had looked at that and thought, This is too much, before fleeing.

Of course, there was certainly a difference between the Romans in Londinium and the people of Xuzhou who had simply been living their lives with no connection to any of it.

But in the end, both were massacres carried out under the banner of justification.

"Even so."

Arthur’s gaze settled into calm stillness.

"Even if they bore a traitor’s blood, should those children have been spared... that human conflict is something I cannot help feeling. But because that bloody example was made, it can prevent the deaths of thousands of innocents and a civil war that might otherwise come. I will simply bear that cruelty as my own sin."

It was the merciless resolve he bore as a king, and the hidden anguish of a single human being beneath it.

Penthesilea could not take her eyes off that contradictory yet deeply human side of Arthur.

"...As a warrior, I would have run an enemy through with my spear without hesitation, even if it were a child. But now, everything within me is being shaken."

She covered her face with both hands.

"Among the worshippers of Lady Artemis whom we served, there was a woman named Callisto. Though she had sworn a maiden’s vow, she was raped by Zeus and became pregnant."

It was a Greek tragedy Arthur knew well.

"In life, I despised her story. Before her swelling belly exposed her, she could have aborted it or taken her own life, and yet she did not abandon that lump of blood. In the end, she incurred Lady Artemis’s wrath, was cast out, and by Hera’s curse was turned into a hideous bear, yet even in the body of a beast she loved and longed for her child Arcas to the very end."

Penthesilea’s voice trembled faintly.

"I could never understand that foolish choice. But... lately, when I look at the way you, Artoria, and even Morgan gaze upon little Mordred, and see that absolute devotion for the child... only now do I think I understand, at least a little."

Sorrow and realization crossed through her eyes.

"The warm smile our mother wore as she raised me and my sisters. And... my sister’s actions in seeking to conceive a hero’s child, and even Antiope, who refused to abandon the child born from such injustice."

Penthesilea lowered her head.

"Perhaps my sister did not act from some Amazon instinct to conceive the bloodline of a strong warrior... perhaps she simply wanted, in an ordinary way, to bear a child and become a mother. I spent my whole life hating men, and yet perhaps I was the one who denied and trampled on the purest wish my mother and sisters held in their hearts."

It was a painful confession, the values that had supported her entire life collapsing around her.

Before that precarious trembling, Arthur rose from his seat and walked over to her. Then he gently took hold of her callused hand.

"Penthesilea."

"......"

"That is how it is for everyone. Hero or warrior, in the end, so long as blood runs through them, love is the hardest feeling in the world to understand."

Arthur’s voice was warm enough to melt the cold northern wind.

"If you have realized it now, that is enough. You did not deny your sisters’ lives. You were a splendid warrior who fought while carrying their pain in their place. There is no need to blame yourself."

At Arthur’s gentle comfort, Penthesilea’s stiff shoulders slowly relaxed and sank.

She softly raised her head and met Arthur’s eyes as he looked down at her.

"...How truly ridiculous. That I, the Queen of the Amazons, am only now learning such obvious things."

Slowly, very shyly, she tightened her fingers around the hand Arthur held and laced them with his. It was a gesture she had never once shown anyone in all her life, the gesture of a woman.

"Arthur. Could you... teach me love? Could you love me?"

At that pitiful yet intense temptation, a deep male smile spread across Arthur’s lips.

He wrapped a firm arm around her waist and whispered low by her ear.

"You’re prepared to break out of your shell, aren’t you? If you want to understand a woman’s feelings, then tonight is going to be very hot."

"...That is exactly what I want."

Penthesilea closed her eyes and willingly collapsed into his embrace.

Arthur laid Penthesilea down on the floor, and she showed him a smile as a woman, one he had never seen from her before.

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